As the global demand for mobile computing devices increases, an increasing amount of research has been conducted with regard to techniques for improving communication between portable devices. For example, advances in wireless communication technology have enabled the implementation and use of Wireless Personal Area Networks (WPANs), which allow a small number of devices (e.g., up to 8 devices) located in close proximity to one other to engage in high data rate wireless communication.
Various standards, such as Bluetooth, have been adopted or proposed for WPAN communication. However, these WPAN implementations have a number of security shortcomings. For example, if an attacker is able to successfully establish a WPAN connection with a target device, the WPAN generally provides no robust mechanism to prevent the attacker from accessing and obtaining sensitive information stored on the target device and/or from maliciously utilizing WPAN services via the target device. In addition, conventional WPAN implementations generally do not provide measures to prevent a non-owner of a device with physical access to the device, such as an individual operator of a corporately-owned device or a possessor of a stolen device, from establishing a WPAN with another device and transferring sensitive information out of the device over the WPAN or otherwise utilizing services of the established WPAN in an unauthorized manner. As a result of at least these security shortcomings of WPAN implementations and their public notoriety, many entities that could potentially benefit from the use of WPANs have been reluctant to adopt them. Accordingly, there is a need for network security techniques that mitigate at least the above shortcomings.